Size isn't everything. While I get what they're trying to say, the 'light utility vehicles' of today are getting 20-30 mpg while the sedan of 40 years ago got like... 5. Fuck cars and all, but this isn't really a good angle.
For those who are actually curious, this is because of the Light Truck Exemption in the US. long story short, the us made emissions requirements on cars. Car companies said "fine well do cars, but we can't do it for trucks". At the time, trucks were only used for, you know, actual truck things, so they made the Light Truck Exemption.
So of course car companies created the SUV, popularized it, and made it the standard. Now, so interestingly, everything is a light truck! Even most sedans are. Who would have guessed car companies found a way out of emissions standards yet again.
The weird thing is that it even rubs of to the rest of the world, cars are getting bigger and higher in Europe, without the tax dodge, or even the contrary. Where I live cars are taxed by weight and even here the fuckers get bigger...
I don't think that's related. It's more about why america loves pickups so much while the rest of the world doesn't. But the SUV epidemic is actually global.
Like smart phones have now bounced to getting larger again, cars used to be big and got smaller because of Korea and gas prices. But then they are getting bigger again because of regulations and showing off.
Exactly. This pic is comparing apples with oranges to get a rise out of us. There are irrefutable arguments for saving the planet, we don't need this low IQ rage bait.
@mondoman712@Jilanico This is ironically due to the emissions rules. Bigger vehicles are classed as commercial and allowed to burn more gas and pollute more.
My dad has a 1999 Chevy S-10 with a small cab, a 4-cylinder engine, and a long bed. Nothing like that is made today. Handy when you need to move stuff though.
Right --- and I think that is a real issue that deserves real attention, and closing these bullshit carveouts for high GVWR vehicles should absolutely happen.
That said, I take some issue with ragebaity posts when less ragebaity posts (such as the article you linked) are more informative, offer fair comparisons, and ultimately are more critical of the problem.
Compare a '90s F-150 to a 2024 Ranger. Then compare a '90s Ranger to a 2024 Maverick. Arguably, what Ford really did was that it added a third, bigger-than-full-size truck and shifted the names one notch up.
The Maverick is new and while it does buck the trend of "bigger is always better", all it signifies to me is that Ford are diversifying their range of pickups now that they don't make any small cars or sedans in the US any more, which is kind of emblematic of the whole problem.
As opposed to now, where I have to do a double take whenever I see a modern single cab. AFAIK, they are now special order and some models don't even offer them.
With cellphones, at the very least it's more a question of screen size more than anything. Phones got smaller, but screens got bigger. I'm guessing this is why - in part at least - folding phones are trying to become a thing; increasing screen size whilst staying small enough to fit in a pocket.
It's bigger. Does that mean it burns more fuel or has more emissions than a 40 year old car? I'm all for saving the planet, but I'm not sure big automatically means worse. I could be wrong.
They are still gonna be less effecient than smaller, lighter models with modern technology.
Agreed and I'm sure bmw makes smaller models, so this pic is rage bait.
Another factor is bigger vehicles are deadlier.
Deadlier for whom? My guess is the passengers of a bigger vehicle are safer. A pedestrian being hit by a small car or big car is likely ruined either way. An SUV hitting a small car, maybe the small car's passengers are in trouble, though perhaps advancements in safety have increased survival, idk.
A pedestrian being hit by a small car or big car is likely ruined either way.
Vehicle size actually has a huge effect on the severity of vehicle-pedestrian collisions.
I find that full-size SUVs and pickup trucks pose a particular danger for pedestrians.
A pedestrian hit by a full-size SUV is twice as likely to die than a pedestrian hit by
a car under similar circumstances, while being hit by a pickup truck rather than a
car increases the death probability by 68%. I find that high-front-end vehicle designs
are particularly culpable for the higher pedestrian death rate attributable to large
vehicles. A 10 cm increase in the front-end height of a vehicle increases the risk of
pedestrian death by 22%.
The small one is an E30 3 series and the big one is an X7 (pre-2022). The X7 does get slightly better fuel consumption than that, 27-29 mpg on the petrol engine. The 3 series is probably somewhere in the low 20s based on forum posts but I'm not sure where to get actual data for that one, and I've got no idea which engine is in it
It weighs more and definitely could use a lot less space on the road and costume less fuel if it didn't grow to this size but stayed small and with less weight
They’re bigger specifically so they can qualify as “light trucks” instead of regular vehicles, which means they have more more lax emissions standards.
Bigger does almost always mean more emissions/worse economy for a given technology. In this case someone else pointed out that the economy is about the same for both, which is due to the fact that technology has improved; if you put the engineering effort of the big car into the form factor of the little car, it'd be much more efficient.
